News of the day from across the nation, Jan. 20

Chronicle News Services

Published 4:07 pm, Thursday, January 19, 2017

1Bushes remain hospitalized: Former President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, on Thursday remained hospitalized in Houston, where he was in intensive care for pneumonia and she was being treated for bronchitis. The 92-year-old former president went into the ICU on Wednesday and underwent a procedure “to protect and clear his airway that required sedation,” family spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement. Bush was stable and resting comfortably at Houston Methodist Hospital, McGrath said. Barbara Bush, 91, had complained of fatigue and coughing.

2 Abortion restrictions: An Arkansas legislative committee has voted to outlaw an abortion procedure that opponents call “savage” and “barbaric” while others deem it the safest way to end a pregnancy in the second trimester. The proposal by a legislator who is president of Arkansas Right to Life would ban dilation and evacuation, also known as a D&E abortion. The measure passed the Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee on a voice vote Thursday. Arkansas would be the third state to ban the procedure, after Mississippi and West Virginia. Similar prohibitions are on hold amid court challenges in other states.

3Terror lawsuits: Twitter says it has suspended 360,000 user accounts in the past 18 months for threatening or promoting acts of terrorism. Lawyers for the families of terror victims, including a brother and sister killed in last year’s bomb attacks in Brussels and an American college student slaughtered in Paris, say that isn’t enough. In a string of lawsuits filed in New York, they say they want Twitter and Facebook to pay damages for failing to stop violent extremists from using their platforms to recruit followers, intimidate enemies and raise money.

4Stun gun death: The city of Ferguson, Mo., is appealing a federal jury’s $3 million award to the family of an unarmed, naked man who died in 2011 after being repeatedly shocked with an officer’s stun gun. Attorneys for the St. Louis suburb and former Officer Brian Kaminski called November’s verdict “a miscarriage of justice” and argued in recent court filings that the case warrants a new trial, given alleged errors by the trial judge and the lack of proof that Kaminski acted excessively against Jason Moore. Kaminski was never charged.

5Simulate Mars: Six carefully selected scientists will spend the next eight months living inside a man-made dome on a remote Hawaii volcano as part of a human-behavior study that could help NASA as it draws up plans for sending astronauts on long missions to Mars. The four men and two women moved into their new simulated space home Thursday on Mauna Loa, settling into the vinyl-covered shelter of 1,200 square feet, or about the size of a small, two-bedroom home. They will have no physical contact with people in the outside world.